Denmark has been
producing films since 1897 and since the 1980s has maintained a
steady stream of product due largely to funding by the
state-supported Danish Film Institute.
Historically, Danish films have been noted for their realism,
religious and moral themes, sexual frankness and technical
innovation.

History

Beginnings

Danish cinema pioneer Peter Elfelt, a photographer, was the
first Dane to make a film. Between the years of 1896 and 1912, he
produced around 200 documentary films on life in Denmark. His first film was
Kørsel med Grønlandske
Hunde (Traveling with Greenlandic Dogs).
Furthermore, he produced the first Danish feature film: Henrettelsen (Capital
Execution, 1903). The first film show in Denmark took place in
the Panorama cinema on the Town Hall square in Copenhagen, in June 1896.
However, the selection of films had been made and produced
abroad.

The Golden
Age

Despite the small size of its native market and its relatively
limited resources, Denmark
reigned supreme for several years (1909-14) as Europe's most
prosperous film center. Its films rivaled those of Hollywood, for
popularity on the screens of Paris, London, Berlin and New
York.

– Efraim Katz, Film
Encyclopedia, 1998, Collins, ISBN 0-06-273492-X

In 1906, cinema owner Ole Olsen founded the first
Danish film-making company, Nordisk Films Kompagni. It gained most of
its income from the export market of short films. Not until 1909 were other
film-producing companies established. In 1910 the number had
reached ten. This period is now known as the Golden Age of Danish
Cinema. In the spring of 1910, Nordisk Films Kompagni changed its
policy of producing only short films and began making feature
films. This was largely inspired by the Århus Fotorama company's
Den hvide Slavehandel (The White Slave Trade,
1910), which was the first multi-reel Danish film lasting more than 30 minutes.

With the increasing length of films, there was a growing
artistic awareness, which is evident in Afgrunden (The
Abyss, 1910). This film launched the career of Asta Nielsen, who
soon became Europe's first great female film star.[1] The
film was an erotic melodrama, which soon became the preferred genre
in early Danish Cinema. In 1911, with director August Blom as the new
head of production, Nordisk Film was the first of the major
European companies to devote itself entirely to full-length feature
films. These films were sold abroad profitably because the
technical and photographic quality impressed audiences. Yet, when
exporting the films, the erotic elements needed to be toned down in
order not to offend the working class audiences. In 1913, Nordisk
released the first full length feature movie, Atlantis directed by Blom.

After 1913, Danish cinema began to lose its leading foothold in
the film industry, with foreign companies having intensified
competition in the production of feature length films. Danish
cinema had also begun to suffer from a lack of imagination and a
willingness to take creative risks on the part of Danish producers.
Independent producer Benjamin Christensen had great success with
the spy film Det hemmelighedsfulde X (The Mysterious
X or Sealed Orders, 1914) and the crime drama
Hævnens Nat (Blind Justice or The Night of
Revenge, 1916), both of which are major works in the history
of the Danish cinema.

1920s to
1940s

During World War
I, the USA became the leading
nation in film production and Danish exports decreased. In the
years following the
war, Dreyer made an appearance as
director at Nordisk Film with the drama Præsidenten
(The President, 1919), followed by the ambitious Blade
af Satans Bog (Leaves from Satan's Book, 1921),
inspired by the American director D.W. Griffith's
Intolerance (1916) in both technique and theme. However,
Dreyer, as well as Benjamin Christensen, were not permanently
connected to the influential Danish film industries and remained
loners. As a whole, Danish film in the 1920s was on the decline in
spite of the filmmakers' better technical skills. Of most interest
at this time were perhaps the so-called Dickens movies directed by
the very able A.
W. Sandberg. At one point Denmark again enjoyed some
international reputation - by the many farces of the vagabond duo
“Fyrtaarnet og Bivognen” (often known by their French names
“Doublepat and Patachon”), who were Scandinavian predecessors of Laurel and Hardy. They were introduced by
“Palladium”, the rival of Nordisk Film. Despite these resurgences,
at the end of the decade the Danish film industry was on its
heels.

In 1929, Nordisk Film Kompagni was established as a sound film company.
The Pastor of Vejlby (1931) reinforced the Nordisk's
dominance in the Danish market. The 1930s were dominated by many
successes with light comedies. The so-called "folkekomedie" (folk
comedy) genre was born, with Barken Margrethe (1934) an
important early example. The Depression and the economic conditions
of the film companies prevented more serious film business, and the
victory of the sound movie automatically set greater limits on the
international possibilities of Danish film. Many popular stars like
Marguerite
Viby, Ib
Schønberg and Peter Malberg had breakthroughs but in
spite of many economic successes no further development of the
media was seen.

Between 1940 and 1945, the German occupation of Denmark during
World War II
provided favourable conditions to start producing more serious art
films. Bodil Ipsen with Black Tie (1942) and Melody of
Murder (1944) produced a romantic comedy and a psychological
thriller of international standard. As a whole, a more sinister
tone was expressed in these years, and several parallels to the
American film noir (also some years after 1945) can be found. Even
the standard of the comedy was lifted, especially by the witty,
well-performed and elegant movies directed by the ambitious Johan Jacobsen, a
Danish pupil of Ernst Lubitsch. The first years after
the war still saw a rising standard, and foremost a more
social/realist line was maintained by such directors as the married
couple Henning-Jensen and the sharp, critical and almost cynical
films by Ole Palsbo. But after some years the pre-war conditions
reappeared: sentimental comedies, and uncomplicated regionalist
movies.

In the sixties, Danish cinema became gradually more erotic, with
films such as Halløj i himmelsengen (Erik Balling, 1965),
Sytten (Annelise
Meinecke, 1965), Jeg - en kvinde (Mac Ahlberg, 1965) and
Uden en trævl (Annelise Meinecke, 1968), several of which
made a huge international impression. As a natural progression, in
1969 Denmark became the first country to completely legalize
pornography. In the 1970s, a large percentage of all Danish films
were sexually oriented, and many mainstream-features with
mainstream-actors included sequences with either softcore- or
hardcore-pornography, most notably Mazurka på sengekanten
(John Hilbard, 1970) and I Jomfruens tegn (Finn Karlsson,
1973) along with their many respective sequels, forming the eight
Bedside-films and six Zodiac-films.

"In 1970-74, about a third of all Danish feature film
productions were pornographically minded, followed by a sudden drop
off."

In 1972, Det Danske
Filminstitut (DFI) was founded, with the goal of administering
state subsidies to hand-picked film projects. Thanks to DFI, the
Danish state was to gain an almost complete control of Danish
filmmaking, its influence alternately seen as both a blessing and a
curse.

A notable TV-series, Matador, ran from
1978-1982[4],
and has remained a national favourite. It was directed by Erik Balling.

The 1980s

Since the start of the 1980s, the Danish film industry has been
completely dependent on state funding through Det
Danske Filminstitut. A project usually doesn't get made unless
the script, director and cast etc. has been approved by the
appointed representatives of the Danish Film Institute. This means
that Danish filmmaking is essentially controlled by the state.

Also in the late 1980s, Danish cinematographer Mikael Salomon
ended a long career in Danish cinema to become one of Hollywood's most celebrated DPs, later
establishing himself as a successful, Emmy Award-winning television director.

The Dogme 95 Collective
caught the attention of the international film world with its
strict "vows of chastity" or rules for filmmakers that force
filmmakers to concentrate on purity of story and the actors'
performances rather than special effects and other cinematic
devices.

The first Dogme 95 film, The Celebration (Festen),
directed by Thomas Vinterberg, received many
awards on the international film festival circuit and was named by
both the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film
Critics Circle as the best foreign-language film of the year.

The members of the Dogme 95 Collective were von Trier,
Vinterberg, Kristian Levring, and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen. Although the
Dogme 95 movement originated in Denmark, filmmakers around the
world soon experimented with the rigid guidelines and sought
certification for their films as Dogme. Furthermore, Lars von
Trier's own Dogme-film Idioterne (1998) started a separate
wave of arthouse mainstream films with unsimulated
sex.

Lars von Trier also made history by having his company Zentropa be the world's first
mainstream film company to produce hardcorepornographic
films. Three of these films, Constance (1998), Pink Prison (1999)
and the adult/mainstream crossover-feature All About
Anna (2005), were made primarily for a female audience,
and were extremely successful in Europe, with the two first being
directly responsible for the March 2006 legalizing of pornography
in Norway[5].

"Women too like to see other people having sex. What they don’t
like is the endless close-ups of hammering bodyparts without a
story. Lars von Trier is the first to have realised this and
produced valuable quality porn films for women."

The 21st
century

A trilogy directed by Per
Fly, The Bench (Bænken) (2000), Inheritance (Arven) (2003), and Manslaughter (Drabet) (2005) portrayed
Denmark's three distinct social classes and received international
acclaim.

The 21st century's first decade proved difficult for a number of
Denmark's most established directors, including Lars von Trier,
although things started well with his Nicole Kidman-starring Dogville (2003), a
provocative stylistic experiment filmed on a black sound stage with
little beyond white floor markings to indicate the sets. Its sequel
Manderlay
(2005), exploring the issue of slavery, continued this stylistic
device but was largely ignored by audiences.

Thomas
Vinterberg, who had gained worldwide recognition with The
Celebration (1998), made two very expensive
English-language flops, It's All About Love (2003) and
Dear Wendy
(2005), then tried to retrace his roots with a smaller
Danish-language production, En mand kommer hjem (2007),
which also flopped painfully, selling only 31.232 tickets[7].

Around the same time, both Bille August, Lone Scherfig, Lars von Trier and Thomas
Vinterberg, made Danish-language films that flopped both
financially and with the critics, leading the Danish financial
times Børsen to observe on September 19 2007 that
"1990'ernes filmfest er forbi" (the film party of the 1990s has
ended)[8].

A change of leadership at the Danish Film Institute in late 2007
was seen by many as an opportunity for reflection and renewal,
while others pointed to the generally healthy local box office
numbers and denied any crisis. Daily paper Jyllands-posten
concluded the situation to be a "krise i en opgangstid" (crisis in
a time of growth)[9].

In 2008, Danish films sold over 4 million tickets at the Danish
boxoffice, the biggest number since 1981, but the relief was brief,
as Danish films in the first five months of 2009 turned out to have
the lowest ticket-sales since 2005[10]. Film
critic Henrik Queitsch agreed that there was some reason for
concern, noting in the Danish Film Institute's monthly program that
"the different, the surprising, the odd and the daring" was hardly
what characterised Danish films of 2008[11].

Danish cinema nonetheless remains highly respected
internationally, and Danish films (today almost exclusively
consisting of social realist dramas, social realist comedies,
children's films and documentaries) receive many awards at major
international film festivals.

Danish
Film Institute

Danish filmmaking remains almost completely controlled by the
state through the Danish Film Institute (DFI),
which was founded in 1972. This has resulted in a much criticized
lack of innovation (notably, Dogme95 happened in spite of strong
resistance from the Film Institute) and frequent accusations of nepotism and cronyism, for example when
DFI-employee Mikael Olsen greenlighted 28 million kroner of
government subsidy money to his childhood-friend Peter
Aalbæk Jensen, then went on to work for him in a high-ranking
position.[12]

The Danish Film Institute however has also achieved a high level
of professionalism even if more or less reserved for a few selected
genres and production companies (mainly Nordisk Film, Zentropa and Nimbus Film)[13]. In
February 2008, Nordisk
Film bought half of Zentropa, which frequently
coproduces with Nimbus
Film, but such tax-funded, state-sanctioned monopolies are
rarely frowned upon in Denmark [14].